“But, good heavens, man! Surely a man can be a Christian even if . . .”
“Christian as much as you like. But don’t you think it might soon be time we found something better to worship than an ascetic on a cross? Are we to keep on for ever singing Hallelujah because we’ve saved our own skins and yet can haggle ourselves into heaven? Is that religion?”
“No, no, perhaps not. But I don’t know . . .”
“Neither do I. But it’s all the same; for anyhow no such thing as religious feeling exists any longer. Machinery is killing our longings for eternity, too. Ask the good people in the great cities. They spend Christmas Eve playing tunes from The Dollar Princess on the gramophone.”
Langberg sat for a while watching the other attentively. Peer sat smoking slowly; his face was flushed with the wine, but from time to time his eyes half-closed, and his thoughts seemed to be wandering in other fields than these.
“And what do you think of doing now you are home again?” asked his companion at last.
Peer opened his eyes. “Doing? Oh, I don’t know. Look about me first of all. Then perhaps I may find a cottar’s croft somewhere and settle down and marry a dairymaid. Here’s luck!”
The gardens were full now of people in light summer dress, and in the luminous evening a constant ripple of laughter and gay voices came up to them. Peer looked curiously at the crowd, all strangers to him, and asked his companion the names of some of the people. Langberg pointed out one or two celebrities—a Cabinet Minister sitting near by, a famous explorer a little farther off. “But I don’t know them personally,” he added. “Can’t afford society on that scale, of course.”
“How beautiful it is here!” said Peer, looking out once more at the yellow shimmer of light above the fjord. “And how good it is to be home again!”